


Minor Counterintelligence Operations

by igrockspock



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Backstory, Family, Gen, Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-10
Updated: 2018-05-10
Packaged: 2019-04-26 11:34:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14401299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/igrockspock/pseuds/igrockspock
Summary: Ben Solo knows three things: he loves his parents, they are weird, and they have a lot of secrets.  He intends to find them out.





	Minor Counterintelligence Operations

**Author's Note:**

  * For [maplemood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maplemood/gifts).



Ben Solo knows three things: he loves his parents, they are weird, and they have a lot of secrets. He intends to find them out.

He has always liked tracing his finger over his mother’s scars. The one on her arm is almost a perfect circle, but jagged around the edges. When he asks what happened, the corners of her mouth curl up into a smile. 

“I got shot,” she says. “Before you were born.”

Ben thinks most people are not happy about being shot, but he can feel her pride radiating in the Force, which is a thing that connects him to his mother but not his father. 

“Were they trying to kill you?” he asks. Fear is weakness, but he shivers at the thought of someone trying to end his mother’s life.

“It’s okay, kid.” His father ruffles his hair. “She tried to kill ‘em right back.” The smile his parents exchange is warm and electric. It makes Ben think he’s witnessing something private. 

“Did you?” he asks. He swallows. “Did you kill him?”

The air shifts again, and the pride rushes away in a wave of uncertainty. His mother licks her lips and says, “I did. It was a war.”

He knows they’re thinking that they’ve told him too much again; they might even argue about it tonight, after they think he’s gone to bed. His parents were soldiers, and they tell him things little boys are not supposed to know.

And still they have so many secrets.

When his mother leans over, her shirt rides up, exposing the long, thin scar that runs along her ribs.

“How did that one happen?” he asks. “Did you kill him back?”

He waits for her to smile again, but she doesn’t. Her back goes straight, and she doesn’t meet his eyes. She says, “I was a prisoner, and no.”

Questions are bubbling on his lips, crowding so close together that he can’t get any of them out: _Why were you a prisoner? Was it because you were bad? Or because a bad man took you? Could he come back for you? Is he dead?_

But his mother shakes her head. Then she props the laundry basket on her hip and climbs up the stairs. Ben stares after her. He’s never seen her put away laundry before; the house droid does that.

His father says, “Give it a rest, alright? Your mom’s got stories she doesn’t like to tell.”

They will repeat this conversation again, many times.

***

His father also has stories he doesn’t like to tell. Most of them are about grandparents. This is confusing, because the stories his father _does_ like to tell involve nubile women, illicit cargo, and gambling. Sometimes Ben gets in trouble for repeating them at school, especially if he explains a lot about what nubile means. He thinks it’s supposed to be the other way around: your parents tell you stories about your grandparents, and they do not tell you about their secret life of crime.

Whenever Ben asks where his grandparents are, his father’s mouth turns into a thin, flat line.

“I don’t know,” he says. It’s all he ever says.

“Are they in prison?” Ben asks, and his father shrugs. He tries again. “Are they in the stars?”

That is where his grandmother Breha and his grandfather Bail are. The Empire blew them out of the sky and turned them into dust. And slowly, slowly, slowly those tiny grains of dust would grow until they became a softly glowing nebula, and that nebula would give birth to a star one day. His mother would tell this story any time he asked, and she’d worn the words smooth like rocks in the river. It made her feel sad and not sad at the same time, and she said that feeling was called hope.

But talking about his parents does not make his father feel hope. It’s more like pressing the off switch on C3PO, although his father doesn’t like it when he says that out loud.

“I want a grandmother,” Ben says more forcefully. He doesn’t see why his parents can’t get one; they’ve gotten all sorts of things that are difficult to obtain, like the illegal quad canons on the _Millennium Falcon_ and the plans to the Death Star.

His mother steps in front of him so that he can’t see the expression on his father’s face anymore. She’s feeling the strange mix of annoyance and love that she calls _exasperation._ The word annoys him because it’s so difficult for his six-year-old tongue to pronounce, even though he likes it very much.

“Ben, we’ve talked about this. Our family doesn’t have a grandmother,” his mother says. “It’s just us.” 

He feels the sudden sharp spike of her guilt, and he puts his arms around her to say he didn’t mean for her to feel bad. 

She pushes him back gently so she can look him in the eye. “Why do you want a grandmother so badly?” she asks. His father is still somewhere behind her, feeling things that Ben can’t sense.

Ben wants a grandmother because Poe Dameron has one and she’s nice. She’s soft in the right places and gives them sweets when they visit. More importantly, grandmothers are things that normal families have. He doesn’t mind that his family isn’t normal - but surely it’s not too much to ask for one normal thing.

He decides not to say that though. He says, “Grandmas give you cookies,” even though it’s not really the point.

His mother says, “My grandmother didn’t give me cookies. She gave me protocol lessons.”

“I’d like those,” he says quickly. C3PO says protocol is all about putting things in their proper place, and Ben likes that.

His father sighs and his mother brightens, and then they are setting the table for a state dinner. Father says there are too many forks on the table, and he uses words that Ben is not allowed to say. Then he goes out and doesn’t come back home until late. 

Ben is waiting up when he comes home. He looks more like Father is supposed to look, all slack shoulders and long lines. 

“I’m sorry you didn’t like the forks,” Ben said. There _had_ been a lot of them, although he didn’t understand why it was such a problem. Maybe his father had known there would be too much washing up afterward.

“That’s alright, kid,” he says, ruffling Ben’s hair. Ben is happy to see him, so he doesn’t move away. His father steps back and looks at him critically. “What are you doing up at 0100 anyway?”

Ben is awake because his mother’s Jedi mind trick had stopped working on him years ago. _You are very tired and want to go to bed immediately. You do not need any water or an extra bedtime story,_ she says, and Ben pretends to yawn and sway on his feet. This is not something he should share.

He says, “I wanted some water.” What he really means is, _I wanted to see you._

His father pours him a cup and says, “How about some smuggler protocol lessons?”

Smuggler protocol means that you put your feet on the table while you watch holovids, and you don’t even take your shoes off first. He falls asleep curled against his father’s warmth, listening to the steady sound of his heart.

***

The next night, he insists on smuggler protocol again. Very loudly.

“Maybe he’s allergic to state dinners after all,” his father says over the sound of his howling. 

His mother pinches the bridge of her nose and says, “Well, he’s definitely your child.”

Ben knows that he can make her go to bed early if he insists on practicing Shyriiwook, even though Uncle Chewie and C3P0 have both told him many times that the human tongue is only capable of uttering streams of incomprehensible noise and occasional curse words. But he gets what he wants: one more night leaning against his father, listening to the sound of his heart.

Before he drifts off, he looks up and asks one last time. “Where are your parents?”

His father swallows, licks his lips. It means he’s about to tell a truth that he doesn’t like to say.

“I don’t remember them, kid,” he says finally. “All I can remember is being on my own.”

Ben tries to picture that for a moment and can’t. He’s always had his father and Uncle Chewie and Uncle Luke and most of all, his mother’s steady presence in the back of his mind. 

He wraps his small hand around his father’s bigger one, digging in tight. He says, “You won’t be alone again. I won’t let you be.” 

He means it literally; he has an excellent death grip. His parents have told him many times, though it’s possible they did not mean it as a complement.

***

Mother still feels guilty about the grandmother incident. Ben knows because she bakes cookies in the morning. They’re not like the cookies a real grandmother would make, because they’re too flat on top and burnt on the bottom.

“Ben, you don’t have to eat these,” she says, looking a little helpless.

Ben only shrugs and says, “They taste better than an amphibian.”

“ _What?_ ” Mother’s eyes go wide. “Ben Solo, have you been eating the _frogs_ in the garden?”

Ben feels his cheeks turn pink and he narrows his eyes at his mother. There had been an Incident three years ago, and no one will let him forget it, which is quite unfair.

“No,” he says, drawing himself up straight with all the decorum he can muster. “I am pretending that I have been served an amphibious creature at a diplomatic dinner, and I must eat it in order to prevent a war.”

With that, he swallows the rest of the cookie in one bite. The dry crumbs scrape against his throat, and he can’t stop coughing until his mother pours him a glass of bantha milk. When it’s become apparent that he won’t actually die, she dumps the rest of the cookies into the garbage, where they land on the bottom with a surprisingly loud thunk.

“I give up,” she says with a sigh. “Get your jacket and we’ll go buy some cookies.”

“You should’ve bought them and pretended that you made them,” Ben counsels. “That’s what Poe’s dad does. He thinks we don’t know, but we found the wrapper in the trash can.”

“Use subterfuge to create the illusion of domesticity,” Mother says. “Noted.”

While they hold hands in the street, Ben carefully inspects her wrist for any scars he hadn’t noticed before, but the skin is smooth and white. He’s determined to find out more about this bad man who held her prisoner -- and it must have been a bad man, because Mother could only be good -- but extracting information from her is much harder than extracting information from Father. She is rarely distracted by sentiment and never sits still.

Occasionally he can triumph through surprise, so he waits until her mind feels calm and asks, “Why did you go to prison?”

It’s not working today; she’s too focused on the cookie mission, and the question only sends a few ripples of annoyance through her mind.

“I didn’t _go to prison_. It was all very extrajudicial,” she says briskly. Then she points up to the sky. “What kind of freighter is that? Y-class or K-class?”

Ben is so absorbed by rattling off the specs he knows that he doesn’t realize he’s been distracted until it’s too late. By then, they’re at the bakery and he’s got too many cookies in his mouth to ask any more questions. 

Intelligence gathering is very complicated, he thinks with a sigh.

***

That night, he has nightmares again. He has a lot of them, so many that Mother wants to take him to a special doctor, and Father actually agreed. Usually there’s a man whose face is hollowed out and lopsided, so gaunt that you can count all the tendons in his neck. A huge scar splits his forehead, and he tells Ben that he’ll leave his family one day, which is impossible, because he just promised Father that he’ll stay.

Tonight’s nightmare is different though. A man in black takes Mother away. Ben can’t see his face, but he can see her wide, terrified eyes and the round red O of her mouth as she screams for help. She keeps holding out her hand, but Ben can’t catch it. His legs are too short and he’s not very strong and --

The light on his bedside table clicks on, and Mother is beside him, stroking his hair.

“Nightmares again?” she asks, even though she already knows. She always knows; it’s part of their bond.

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly, looking out the window instead of at her face. Mother doesn’t sleep much, and he’s been trying hard to be braver.

“Did you do it on purpose?” she asks. He’s still not looking at her, but her voice is calm and reasonable beside him. 

“No.”

She smiles. “Then don’t apologize.”

Apologizing is a skill they’ve been working on. Mother says he never apologizes for things that are actually his fault, like when he bit Rylee Statura at the school picnic, but that _wasn’t_ his fault. She shouldn’t have tried to steal his bantha milk.

He rolls over so he can see her face when he asks, “Is the man who kidnapped you dead?”

“Yes,” she says, sounding so satisfied that it can’t be a lie.

“Did you kill him?”

“No.” This time she sighs, and Ben can still hear the part she didn’t say out loud: _I wish I had._

“Then how did he die?” he asks. He thinks this is important to know, just in case bad men come and he needs to kill them.

She looks up at the ceiling for a minute before she says, “Well, he was electrocuted by his boss while throwing him into a bottomless pit.”

Ben blinks. “Are you sure? That’s a strange way to die.”

“And an even stranger thing to make up,” she says briskly. “If I wanted to lie to you, I would’ve chosen something much more normal and convincing.”

 _Normal things Mother and Father say might be lies._ Good to know. He files that away in his intelligence gathering notes.

“Is there a moral to this story?” he asks, because Mother’s stories usually have something you can learn at the end. Father’s do too, but they’re much more practical, like _don’t put anything metal inside the electrical socket, because then you can die._

“Hm, well, I suppose it’s important to choose your employer carefully, so you don’t have the kind of boss you need to throw into a pit,” she says.

Ben frowns. He _knows_ there’s more to the story than that. There has to be, but it’s probably as much as he’s going to get tonight. He leans in close to his mother and decides to make up his own moral to the story: there are powerful, scary people in the galaxy, people who can take away his parents and electrocute someone who’s trying to kill them. That means he needs to figure out how to be strong and powerful too, the strongest and most powerful being who ever lived. And if he does that, he can stay with his family forever.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Written by the Victors (The Certain Point of View Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15852018) by [primeideal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/primeideal/pseuds/primeideal)




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